121–130 of 175 posts
Suppose Elon is a bad guy. What's to stop him from dragging a big space rock into orbit and holding the planet hostage in X years? Government will build in redundant checks and balances at extra expense. Corporations, not so much.
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I imagine it's because Elon Musk leans liberal (or at least non-Republican), and in particular is a highly visible crusader for action to combat climate change. The American right wing has decided that denying climate change is a core value, and trying to get people to take action against it is a mortal sin. SpaceX is not directly involved in that, but Tesla is, and I doubt places like Breitbart are interested in car…
Climate change is not denied. The human contribution and the potential consequences are considered still unproven hyperbole. The cost/benefit of doing something else is an ongoing discussion.
Items that have been debunked many times are obviously not high quality or credible.
P.S. I wouldn't normally be so harsh... It's just a bit crazy how many times these claims keep coming up, when the evidence and the science is so crystal clear.
Ron Paul and Rand Paul identify as libertarians and are as close to libertarian as the (R) party gets. Ron Paul has the added benefit of having wacky neo-nazi roots that he disavowed during the Clinton era. They loathe any sort of government investment. McCain is the only real conservative mentioned here. The alt-right has their true god (Bannon) and their lesser god (Trump). Trump loathes conservatives, and conserva…
The "god" of the alt-right is Richard Spencer. Granted the definition of alt-right has shifted around, but by the current prevailing standard among those who adopt the label and used to do so, I think it is strictly an ethnonationalist movement. Unless you're going to cite rumors about Bannon, I'd say Breitbart doesn't quite qualify. Again, forgetting anything Bannon once said about it being the platform of the alt-r…
This new flavor of conservatism is so strange in light of how bound to free market ideals most flavors of conservatism are. In general, I really quite dislike Conservative/Liberal labels as political stances are not two-dimensional, but rather multidimensional. Parties are loose alliances of disparate groups. And somehow there's this rising contingent of neocons, who also happen to dislike SpaceX. Does anyone underst…
"Neocons" were the foreign-policy hawks of the 2000s. These guys largely call themselves the "alt-right". They're basically as bad as you've heard, but hiding it sometimes. Even I find this particular turn against SpaceX somewhat weird. My internal model of the alt-right has largely been that they have one wing who are basically Nazi fanfiction, another who idolize the "throne and altar conservatism" of pre-Revolutio…
No they don't. Most of "these guys", meaning the new right, distance themselves from that term because of its association with white nationalism.
> They're basically as bad as you've heard, but hiding it sometimes.
No, they're just lumped together in popular media. Breitbart and the Daily Stormer are portrayed as part of the same package, so that distasteful ideas from one can be used to discredit the other. This erasure of the middle ground between center-left and extreme right is referred to in conservative circles as the "unthinging" of the right. It's a smear campaign.
Your statement is a perfect example. In your eyes, anyone on the right not engaging in Nazi fantasies is really just "hiding it". You're "unthinging" the views of the vast majority of them to pretend that they are uniform in ideology.
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The "god" of the alt-right is Richard Spencer. Granted the definition of alt-right has shifted around, but by the current prevailing standard among those who adopt the label and used to do so, I think it is strictly an ethnonationalist movement. Unless you're going to cite rumors about Bannon, I'd say Breitbart doesn't quite qualify. Again, forgetting anything Bannon once said about it being the platform of the alt-r…
No one cares about Richard Spencer other than media figures who needed a dude in a suit to claim to be the leader of the alt-right. He's a random non-entity that was virtually unknown even in cryptofascist circles until liberals decided, for no good reason, to start paying attention to him.
My point is about use of the term. In particular, the way it's fuzzy, and attributing ethnonationalism to people who are civic nationalists.
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> I would say the downvotes are more due to the fact you're commenting on an article that says a certain section of what we are still calling "The Right" has incorrectly demonized Musk in this case and you decided to piggyback on the criticism of him. Okay. But why is arstechnica even defending musk. Is arstechnica musk's PR firm? Isn't that strange in and of itself? Lots of bad things get said about everyone and yet…
You think paid shills are giving you the down votes? Ron Paul criticized Space X for getting John McCain to put a provision into the Senate Bill that favored Space X. 1) This provision is not IN the Senate bill. 2) The provision doesn't hurt Space X, but it doesn't directly do anything for them either. 3) The provision is in a House bill, and was put there by a congressman from Alabama, not John McCain. People don't…
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The "god" of the alt-right is Richard Spencer. Granted the definition of alt-right has shifted around, but by the current prevailing standard among those who adopt the label and used to do so, I think it is strictly an ethnonationalist movement. Unless you're going to cite rumors about Bannon, I'd say Breitbart doesn't quite qualify. Again, forgetting anything Bannon once said about it being the platform of the alt-r…
Honestly, I can see that being the perception, but frankly, I put a lot more people into the alt-right category. In this case, Richard Spencer is the alt-right of the alt-right. The vast majority of Trump voters have or had no clue who he was. Spencer gains from Trump, and encourages everything he can to move to the right, and is gains the most from notoriety that the media gives him in connection to Trump.
The thing I disagree with is being too fuzzy about where you draw lines when it comes to particular stances. In a way it's their own damn fault for flirting with the alt-right earlier on, but the alt-light are not ethno-nationalists. I think that is important because people dismiss them for the wrong reasons. (Not to mention people like Ben Shapiro who were wise enough never to flirt with them, but who get pulled into the alt-right label anyway. All the while ironically getting harassed by the alt-right online.)
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> SpaceX is not directly involved in that, but Tesla is, and I doubt places like Breitbart are interested in carefully drawing lines between the man's different companies. So you are accusing Breitbart of attacking Tesla (even though this is about SpaceX) because they won't "carefully draw lines", without a hint of irony that you can't be bothered to draw careful lines between the companies, and have dragged Tesla in…
You’re right, not every criticism is about disliking Musk. But I’m pretty sure this one is. I dragged Tesla into the conversation because I think it’s relevant. So do they.
I have no idea what this notion is based upon; it's not really something that has interested me.
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As you recognize the simplistic nature of labels, you should not be surprised when a group goes against type. I think the key to understanding the so-called neo-consrvatism is that it is not 'for' anything; rather, it is against a long list of things, and virulently so. They are conservative in that conservatives have generally defined themselves by opposition to whatever has been changing in the societies of their g…
And yet what I struggle most with is identifying who, if anyone, benefits from this. Who, if anyone, controls this. Or is it all just chaotic feedback?
There have been many historical precedents, but perhaps none more so than the French revolution, which went through several cycles of this. The Terror only ended when the surviving politicians all realized that they were more likely to be executed than hold on to executive power, if they carried on this way.
This new flavor of conservatism is so strange in light of how bound to free market ideals most flavors of conservatism are. In general, I really quite dislike Conservative/Liberal labels as political stances are not two-dimensional, but rather multidimensional. Parties are loose alliances of disparate groups. And somehow there's this rising contingent of neocons, who also happen to dislike SpaceX. Does anyone underst…
1) McCain and Rogers's policy views are close to those of neocons (aka, cold-war liberals), best known for their hawkish foreign policy and efficient, smart gov't. They both are supporters of SpaceX and are behind the new legislation that supposedly favors SpaceX. That said, neither McCain or Rogers identify themselves as neocons -- they are just very hawkish when it comes to foreign policy.
2) Ron Paul and those critical of SpaceX (in this particular context) are paleo/libertarian conservatives. They are the polar opposite of neocons in that they are fervently against hawkish foreign policy and crony capitalism which they view as inevitable products of a big gov't.
Now, SpaceX is something neocons would love and SpaceX has cuddled with those two politicians to spice things up. SpaceX's political, campaign donation and McCain and Roger's support of SpaceX/the new legislation which seems to favor Space-X is a big no-no in Paul's book.